Beyond the garden...

Yeah, I grew a garden this year, just like most of us on the survival forums apparently did. It went great! I'm covered in squash, okra, tomatoes, cucumbers... but right now, I'm not eating them.

I'm eating grapes. Concord grapes, probably about 3 pounds of them. Theres several more pounds on the vines waiting to be picked, and that's after doing this for the past week. I wouldn't think it too far off to say I get about 20 pounds or more of big, juicy grapes every year. And to get those, I don't plop down big bucks in some supermarket. Instead I... pick them.

That's all. I don't fertilize, weed, cultivate, spray, or do any of the things that are so common with the garden. And I get grapes. Maybe this year I will replant a couple of vines that have withered, but that would actually happen if I just let a few grapes fall on the ground. I plant them because I want them positioned directly under the trellis.

There's more. As I look around my place, I see an apple tree, make that two apple trees. I don't eat many (my mother set them out years ago, and for some reason she wanted the green Granny Smith apples which I don't like), but I could. There's a Bartlett pear tree here too, always produces plenty of pears. In about a month, if my timing isn't off, that walnut tree will turn the ground below it into a field of black round nuts. The pecan trees are not as prolific around here, but we still get a few every year at the expense of battling the squirrels for those. There is a mulberry tree behind my house which I discovered and carefully spared when clearing. No mulberries yet, but I'm probably going to plant a couple more to make sure I start getting some.

Blackberries literally grow as weeds here. My daughter loves them, as do I, and every year has a lot of fun locating new bushes. They literally sprout form nowhere, everywhere, and always are loaded. I used to have some muscadines ("musky-dimes"), but they got cut down by mistake. I'm looking for some more to come up. Hopefully this time I can protect them somehow from the evils of the lawnmower demon.

I have a neighbor who, I just found out, grows blueberries. We gave him a couple bags of squash, he gave us several pounds of blueberries. Haven't seen many raspberries around here, but I think they're close relatives of blackberries? Someone please confirm or deny this for me?

The list can go on and on, but the bottom line is: this is food too! So what about it gardeners? What do you have growing around your house? And just how do others get the most out of those tasty fruits, nuts, and berries that can fill a tummy with flavor with a stroll around the yard?

TheRedneck

reply to post by TheRedneck

Hi Friend. Like you, I have a garden. It's about 120 feet long by 15 feet wide. We don't have any fruit trees, since we built our house only a few years ago, but we do have black raspberries. In a few years, there should be a ton of those, as they spread like weeds.
Anyway, here's what we have in the garden now:

1.)More zucchini than we know what to do with. (My wife makes zucchini bread, I make zucchini Parmesan, and I add it to stir fry with all the other veggies we grow.

2.) About 24 heads of cabbage, which of course, will all mature at the same time

3.) 48 assorted varieties of tomatoes, including beefsteak VF, Roma, Lemon Girl, etc. (That doesn't include cherry tomatoes, of which I have about 300 plants. I planted six last year, and this year, about 1000 plants sprouted from the cherries that dropped on the ground. I gave away as many cherry tomato plants as my neighbors would take, and culled out a bunch, but still have about 300. When our grandchildren come over, I send them out with buckets, and have a contest to see who can pick the most.

4.) 10 pumpkin plants. I've already harvested 6 full-sized pumpkins. My wife made 6 pumpkin pies so far, from those that had spots. We should have plenty left for the grandchildren at Halloween.

5.) 8 yellow summer squash plants. (added to the stir fry)

6.) 600 yellow onion sets, all harvested, dried, and sitting on my garage wall , in bunches of 20 braided. Should last through the winter.

7.) A ton of Basil, which I use when I make my tomato sauce. We dry whatever we can't use fresh.

8.) A ton of dill plants, which we use in salads, and dry the rest.

9.) Enough leaf lettuce to have salads from May through late-July. It finally went to seed.

10.) 6 Butternut squash plants, which have set about 10 fruits so far. Saving them for the winter.

11.) We had 80 stalks of corn, but the vermin got to most of the ears, just as they were almost ready, since we were out of state for a few weeks.

12.) A bunch of squash plants that I can't identify, since they cross-pollinated with each other. I'm waiting for them to turn orange, and we'll put them on the porch for Halloween.

13.) A bunch of broccoli plants, which all bolted to seed, before setting any real heads, because of the extraordinary heat we had in late spring.

14.) About 100 carrots

15.) Same for red beets.

16. 20 potato plants


Fortunately, one of my daughters is a vegetarian, and she likes my tomato sauce, because otherwise I would probably destroy the tomato sauce market for Ragu and other vendors.

Our favorite product from the garden is the Manhattan clam chowder I make from the tomatoes, onions, carrots, basil and potatoes in the garden. I add a can of Bumble Bee baby clams -$1.28 at Walmart, and make a gallon at a time, which lasts about 3 days- lunches and dinners always have it. It's one dish my wife and I never grow tired of eating.

The other is stewed tomatoes, which I make whenever I'm not too tired to peel the tomatoes, after weeding most of the early morning, before it gets too hot.

Anyway, virtually all of the vegetables that we eat are from our garden, except for the few that won't grow up north here.
The big thing is that since I retired, it's good exercise, and since I don't use any chemicals (I hand-pick the big ones such as the Japanese beetles), I know that my family isn't getting any poison chemicals, or salmonella from Mexican produce.

I have a big compost pile, where the scraps go, and all the grass clippings from our yard, and the neighbors that don't use chemicals. It really helps enrich the soil, which wasn't too good to start-sand and clay.

Anyway, it's good chatting with you. Keep that proud chest out, and wish your daughter a great semester.
Peace, friend.

I have so many damn ears of corn, I am lost as to what to do with them.

Bought a 12 acre hobby farm last year to play around with and was my first time actually growing large amounts of corn. I evidently screwed up by planting 4 acres of different corn varieties.

I am talking over 25,000 ears of corn. Anyone in central WI need some corn?

Maybe you could sell it to the Ethanol manufacturers. LOL!

reply to post by Scorched Earth


Gotta love Wisconsin. Too bad I moved away from there. Would have loved to help you get rid of that.

Back to the origninal topic. Fruit trees dont do well here, nor do nuts. I do have 10 crab apple trees however that seem to withstand the insane cold winters. However, berries are everywhere. Blueberries, raspberries, currants, cranberries, salmon berries. I hate picking them, but still manage to fill a freezer with them. I tend to either turn them into jam/jelly or fruit leather. I have a good deal of this foul substance called stink weed. There is a reason its called that. However, it makes one heck of a tea. Also abundant are rose hips, wild onions, labrador tea, and wild rhubarb which I constantly harvest in the late summer and fall.

This thread reminds me that I need to buy small freezer to put some of this stuff in, ours went down a few years back. I have canned 69 quarts of green beans and have more than that coming in the next crop which should be ready soon. I am trying to can more than I am freezing.

The other things I am doing is making sure I know where to get some chickens and rabbits and goats, (from folks nearby) to make sure we have eggs, meat, and milk and something to trade if things get rough.

I learned a lot from a small online booklet on how to survive without a job, but the survival skills in that book is worth the read, written in the seventies is really great. Here is a link if anyone wants to read it and also note it has lots of strange recipes.

www.f4.ca...

Originally posted by Scorched Earth
I have so many damn ears of corn, I am lost as to what to do with them.

Bought a 12 acre hobby farm last year to play around with and was my first time actually growing large amounts of corn. I evidently screwed up by planting 4 acres of different corn varieties.

I am talking over 25,000 ears of corn. Anyone in central WI need some corn?

I vaguely remember reading once about a special type of stove that uses dried corn as fuel, but I don't remember precisely which bits.. Perhaps you can invest in one of those and heat your house and water year round?